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Midi Keyboard

cubixcrayfish

cubixcrayfish

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 21, 2004
73
0
Hi Guys

Mac Noob here, will be getting my mini mac soon. I am a very musical person, and garage band was one of my main reasons for switching. Sitting in my room, i have a Yamaha keyboard with Midi Out and In on the back, will this work with Garage Band, I did not get any software, also how much do midi to USB cost.

I thought about putting this in the GB forum, but that looks to not be read much.

Whatever I play into my keyboard is recorded into Garage band correct?

Also, I play sax and am intrested in recording some onto garage band.


CCF
 
Duff-Man says....both M-Audio and Mark of the Unicorn make simple usb midi interfaces that you can use to connect your keyboard...they are inexpensive - $50 - $100 or even less if you shop around too. Yes, what you play on the keyboard can be midi'd into Garageband. If you know the basic concepts of midi you know that what is recorded is not any sounds that you may have on that Yamaha keyboard but rather which keys you press, how hard you press them, how long you hold them etc etc....you can choose/change the actual sounds (and edit the data you'ce input through the Yamaha keyboard) afterwards.....oh yeah!
 
On my guitar I use a 1/8 inch plug (don't think you can do the same). But the USB Midi Interface won't be too expensive (under $60). And anything you play will be recorded and you will have musical quotations that you can print out. :)
 
Yeah Shure's are nice, we use em in jazz band, but they are $$$, I dropped one and it broke, but we had extras, but I looked it up and it was pricey, but it was near the end of it's life :)

CCF
 
lol im so stupid - i need to ask THIS:

if I have a keyboard with only an AC adapter and a headphone-out port, will I be able to use this w/ a Mac mini?
 
cubixcrayfish said:
http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/eKeys37-main.html

That looks almost better to get that, than to deal with my huge old retarted keyboard, cuz 37 keys would be enough for my sucky piano playing.
Click to expand...

Nope, you don't want anything with mini-keys. They are exceedingly difficult to play in a musical way.


cubixcrayfish said:
http://microcenter.com/single_produ...duct_id=0156707
Would that work, I can pick that up on way home if that would work. Or would I need some kind of software
Click to expand...
That'll work fine for MIDI signals.
But it won't do a thing for sound input (sax or voice microphone or a line input)

http://microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0156711 the Mobile Pre USB is one among many Analog-Digital/Digital-Analog interfaces. The price goes up as the number of input channels goes up, and as the sophistication of the preamplification and mixing increases. M-Audio and Edirol are two market leaders in the lower price range.

If you have a Mac with a 1/8" audio input, you can use a cable adaptor to run a microphone into that but the sound will not be as good as a dedicated A-D device.

Thanks
Trevor
 
dotdotdot said:
if I have a keyboard with only an AC adapter and a headphone-out port, will I be able to use this w/ a Mac mini?
Click to expand...

Use it, like, how?
If the keyboard does not have a MIDI out or a USB connection of its own, you won't be able to use it as a MIDI controller for any Macintosh. That's what people usually think of when the are using a keyboard with Garageband, inputting a sequence of note data (a sequence) that will be played back by the internal sounds from the Garageband software.

It requires a MIDI - USB adaptor to get MIDI control signals in and out of a Mac. Some home and professional keyboards include a USB jack, so they can plug straight in to the Mac without a separate MIDI adaptor.

The Mac Mini doesn't have any audio input; so it cannot record sounds unless you get a separate Analog-Digital interface like discussed elsewhere in this thread.

Basics, like Duff said -- MIDI is not sound, it is note data - like the paper roll in a player piano; the roll isn't the sound of the piano, it just instructs the piano how to create the right sounds at the right time. Same with MIDI.

THanks
Trevor
CanadaRAM.com
 
So if I bought the M-Audio MIDI to USB, it would work with my current keyboard that has MIDI Out and In?

I went and toyed with my keyboard last night, and still seems to work fine.

Anyone know of something similar to Band in A Box with less features,I have used Band in a box, but it seems too powerful for my small needs.


CCF
 
cubixcrayfish said:
Yeah Shure's are nice, we use em in jazz band, but they are $$$, I dropped one and it broke, but we had extras, but I looked it up and it was pricey, but it was near the end of it's life :)

CCF
Click to expand...

Yeah.. i wasnt sure is they made cheaper instrument mic. cause they actually got a budget line of vocal and such it's the PG line.
 
cubixcrayfish said:
So if I bought the M-Audio MIDI to USB, it would work with my current keyboard that has MIDI Out and In?

I went and toyed with my keyboard last night, and still seems to work fine.

Anyone know of something similar to Band in A Box with less features,I have used Band in a box, but it seems too powerful for my small needs.


CCF
Click to expand...

It should be plug-n-play or in some case u gotta install a driver.I sell M-Audio product so i tryed almost everyone we recived and most were plug and play.
 
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